


When in Doubt, Add Lasers

by V_Haley



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Ableism, Disabled Character, Fanfiction of Fanfiction, Gen, Polyfidelity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-11
Updated: 2012-07-11
Packaged: 2017-11-09 16:00:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/457317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/V_Haley/pseuds/V_Haley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five years after he’s blinded, Tony builds eyes to match his heart. (Sequel to "At Least I Author My Own Disaster" by thought.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	When in Doubt, Add Lasers

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [At Least I Author My Own Disaster](https://archiveofourown.org/works/437667) by [thought](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thought/pseuds/thought). 



> This story is the sequel to thought's excellent "At Least I Author My Own Disaster," where Tony Stark is blinded but still very much himself. This probably won't make much sense unless you've read it. Thought was kind enough to read through this and offer assistance and corrections. All remaining mistakes are mine.

It takes five years after he goes blind for Tony to crack the Extremis problem, and nearly another six months before he and Bruce have it refined to the point where it’s an acceptable risk. They take another two months to thoroughly vet the possible surgeons and neurosurgeons until they find reputable ones with enough skill to be trusted, ones who are also willing to do the work discretely and sign the non-disclosure documents for a truly heart-stopping amount of money. Bruce, at Tony’s insistence, is present for the surgery as an observer. Even with the increased public use of arc reactors, he doesn’t trust many people with the smallest, most advanced version currently running his heart. After this, it will run not only his heart but also his eyes and Extremis. The Iron Man suits are all built with their own arc reactors now; hurray for redundancy.

The neurosurgeon, Dr. Alan Goldman, wires the neural interface directly into his brain. Two blue marvels of microtechnology go where his eyes used to be, and the entire thing is wired by the attending surgeon, Dr. Laura Deng, along the inside of his skull, down his spine, and along four of his ribs, where the power cords plug into the arc reactor. Tony figures between his heart, his eyes, and his brain, he’s at least 40% robot, which is more “awesome” math than accurate math, and he’s okay with that.

His mechanical eyes aren’t as good as his biological ones were. No, because he’s _Tony Stark_. His new eyes are _better_.

The eyes have a camera feed with a HUD that gives him what the Iron Man suit used to, along with the less cool but more practical for daily life functionality of giving him back his sight. He can switch the visual input to show—either additionally or separately—the infrared and the ultraviolet spectrums, which makes his eyes the most kickass night vision goggles _ever_. And as a nasty surprise for anyone who thinks they’ve caught him defenseless, they have integrated repulsor tech, because given the chance to fire goddam _laser beams_ from their _eyes_ , who wouldn’t? They don’t pack the punch his flight stabilizers or chest piece do—there’s only so much even he can do with scaled down tech—but they will help keep him in one piece until the Mark XII can deploy.

He has the rest of Extremis wired down the exterior of his spine: the satellite uplink with enough reception to shame Verizon, the miniaturized motherboard that had been carefully coated in silicon, the prototype graphics card that would make NVIDIA weep. He’s Bluetooth enabled and can hack with his _brain_ , although he had enough restraint in the design that he doesn’t have a USB port coming out his ass. He said once, at his first Stark Expo, about the creation of the Iron Man suit and his escape from Afghanistan, that never before had a more perfect Phoenix metaphor been exemplified. Tony figures he’s outdone himself a thousandfold while coming out of the ashes on this one.

When the new eyes come online for the first time in the recovery room, his first sight is Bruce and Pepper, and it’s the most perfect thing he’s ever seen. He knows right there that he has to give this to everyone—not Extremis; oh, no, and _hell_ no—but the eyes. His first words probably should be, well, maybe something nice, but there is no way in hell he is going to be caught saying something as cliché as “Nice to see you again.”

Instead, he says, “Bruce, we should take a closer look at nanotechnology. No one’s done much but make toys with thermoelectric devices, but I bet we could build something powerful enough to run a scaled down version of these,” he taps his temple, “for anyone without a power plant in their chest.”

Bruce looks at him severely. “Quality assurance first, Tony,” he says, and then he smiles, because he knows that Tony means _it works_ along with everything else he’s saying. Tony grins and thinks _record_ at Extremis. He doesn’t want to forget this, and with his new eyes, he can play it back at will. There’s no sound—something to look into; should have thought of it before now—but he’ll have this, can have Jarvis save it to his private server, can play it during dull board meetings and long nights, as long as he wants.

“Of course, we’re nowhere close to going live,” he says, “but we’ll get there.” He overlays the infrared spectrum on the visual one with a thought, and it’s glorious. Extremis reacts as quickly as he can think—which is really goddam fast, thank you, genius here—and he’s testing the link to the Stark satellites and from there to Jarvis even as he says, “Seriously, you need to get a pair of these.” He adds the ultraviolet spectrum over the infrared and visual ranges and thinks he’s probably the first person to see like this. A lesser man, one without Tony’s experience with monologue, might be struck speechless. “Everyone’s going to want a pair. It’s going to be the new black.”

“I like my own eyes just fine, Tony,” Pepper says drily, and she leans forward to kiss him while he’s accessing the corporate Stark Industries servers and his own personal servers at Stark Tower. He gets a kiss from Bruce next while he simultaneously powers on and off the Mark XII and starts drafting plans for a cheaper, simpler set of eyes—a scaled down version that can give sight back to the blind.

“These can be just like your eyes,”—well, not yet, since his eyes look nothing like eyes (it hadn’t been a priority to him; he wanted the repulsor tech option), but they can be eventually, probably; he has to look into it—“but _better_.”

“ _No_ , Tony,” she says in _that_ voice, but he notes in the draft he’s creating to try to make the eyes look more human before they go into production; he doesn’t care his eyes look inhuman, but people like Pepper will. In his lab, Jarvis is monitoring the Iron Man suit as Tony flies it around with the _power of his brain_. He will seriously never get over how cool this is, directly interfacing with Jarvis. For the first time in his life, his brain can multitask as completely as it’s capable of doing. It leaves him feeling oddly focused; with 80% of his brain spinning in cyberspace, the part of it grounded in the real world is free to just be with Bruce and Pepper.

“Fine, fine,” he says. “Not you, then. Bruce? You want in on this?” He’s teasing, of course. Going green will thoroughly screw with any implanted tech.

“Think I’ll pass,” Bruce says, puts his hands casually in his pockets, still grinning at Tony. They both are; they’re happy for him. Not because he’s got his life back, because he never _lost_ his life, dammit; he made workarounds, that’s what engineers _do_. But he does have _this_ back, his sight, seeing them. And _holy shit Tony can see all this_. He’d be overwhelmed, if he was constitutionally capable of it. Instead, he just grins back and them, tries to pull them both close even as they protest about radical, experimental surgeries and recovery time.

He talks science to Bruce about a commercial design for the eyes even as he puts the eyes through their paces: testing the magnification capabilities, targeting, the record and playback functionality, setting them up to record and autodump to his personal servers, checks his download and upload speeds from the satellites and while he’s at it, downloads Jarvis into Extremis so he has a second set of eyes—the best eyes—watching for errors in the code and any signs of hardware failure. He trusts Jarvis to run his suit; he trusts Jarvis with Extremis.

He, with all the patience of a technological martyr, does not test the repulsor tech in the eyes while in the hospital recovery room. He’s not in a rush, anyway. If it doesn’t work, he can always adjust it, assuming he doesn’t fry his spine and central respiratory system; but really, there’s only like a .05% chance of that happening, which is well within even Pepper’s range of acceptable risk. Anyway, the eyes, like the arc reactor, are fitted into a metal socket and are designed to be removed and replaced if necessary. The tech along his spine would be harder, but it’s something Bruce can do, if necessary: just cut him open, and then switch out the old part for the new, easy as upgrading regular hardware, with a slightly higher chance of, well, blood. The only really tricky part to fix or upgrade is the neural interface and the power cords wired through his system, which, hopefully, shouldn’t need any work done for a decade. Fast as Tony’s brain is, it isn’t as fast as a computer—not a modern one, anyway—so it’s the biology that’s the limiting factor in the connection to the neural interface. He can’t upgrade his biology (yet), so for now, the neural interface should be plenty.

Pepper, as Tony suspected, has strong opinions on aesthetics of the commercial eyes. Tony totally supports having eyes that look like eyes, but as the existence of colored contacts proves—and cat’s eyes, multicolored rainbow eyes, demon eye, _fanged teeth eyes_ (Jesus, what the hell?), solid black eyes, _flag eyes_ —well. He’s flipping through the Google image results even as he and Pepper are arguing. Some people like the crazy things, and he supports that. He’s not one to throw stones, really, with his new eyes shining a cool, arc reactor blue. Having the option to customize the eyes will be _lucrative_ , especially if they can swing it without requiring the eyes to be switched out manually, like the electronic billboards that change on command, and maybe people will be open to advertising options? He can see little SI logos in everyone’s eyes.

“You can wear a nice brown, blue, or green for your nine to five,” he tells Pepper. “Then you can change them to a skull and crossbones theme for talk like a pirate day, or rainbow for gay pride, or red eyes to freak out your parents, whatever. Be a cat on the weekends. Whatever floats your boat. Making eyes doesn’t have to be _boring_.”

“Heaven forbid you make anything boring.”

“At least I’m not putting lasers in them.”

Pepper pauses. “Tony? Do _your_ eyes have lasers in them?”

“Of course not.”

“Thank god.”

“I put _repulsors_ in mine.”

“Tell me you’re joking.”

“I’m joking,” Tony repeats obediently.

“You’re _not_. You really put those crazy—”

“Look, Pep, what if someone comes after—”

“—dangerous, incredibly powerful—”

“—me—something which, I might—”

“—things into _untested tech_ —”

“—add, used to happen with regularity—”

 “—that you put into your _head_ , oh—”

“—and could very easily happen again—”

“—my god, right by your brain, you—”

“—and these can buy me time for my—”

“—idiot. What if they blow up? They could—”

“—suit—and anyway, it’s perfectly safe. The—”

“—go right through the back of your—”

“—science is completely sound. Bruce checked—”

“—idiot head, Tony. No one has attacked you in—”

“—my math. Didn’t you, Bruce? So it’s perfectly—”

“— _years_ , Tony, not since you stopped being Iron—”

“—safe, really, we tested the eyes in a human—”

“—Man. Why would anyone come after you—”

“—analog first, it was right out of Mythbusters, and—”

“—now? Oh, god. You’re going back into that—”

“—I never _stopped_ being Iron Man. It’s a part of—”

“—suit. Tony, I thought we were done with—”

“—me. It’s the _best_ part of me, and now—”

“—this. I thought I was going to be able to—”

“—I can let it be more than something I—”

“—stop worrying for good. You just got your—”

“—do secondhand. I can make a difference—”

“—sight back. What if you lose something—”

“—directly again. I can help people in a—”

“—more than your eyes next time?”

“—way I can’t out of the suit, and _this is something I have to do_.”

Pepper takes a breath, and her eyes are shining with tears. “I can’t lose you.”

“You won’t.”

“You can’t promise that.”

Tony reaches out and takes her hands and looks into her human eyes. “I helped people. I made the world better.”

“You make the world better now.”

“Not like I could in the suit. What happened—losing my eyes—it was worth it because of the good I had done. The good I _can_ do. I need this. Losing the suit was worse than losing my sight. It’s not just about being able to help people. I can _protect_ them again. Please, Pepper. Stand by me on this one.”

“Again.” She takes a deep breath. “Okay. If you need to do it, okay. I’ll deal. But please, _please_ be careful.”

“Always,” he promises, and they both know he’s only mostly telling the truth, but she doesn’t call him on it, which makes him love her even more.

He’s grounded for a month—literally—while he recovers from the surgery. He spends the time well, and by the time he’s ready to step back into the suit, Extremis is a flawless extension of his will. He tests out of the Malibu house due to the proximity of the ocean and the lack of proximity to the Avengers and SHIELD headquarters. The last thing he wants is for Fury to try to confiscate the Mark XII; not that he’d stand a chance, really. Tony’s got a better prosthetic argument now than he ever did. Still, better safe than in court. It’s fitting, also, to test Extremis in the same place he tested the original, fully functional Iron Man suit.

He suits up and flies out over the ocean. The suit interfaces directly with Extremis now to create the HUD; the suit’s sensors link directly into his brain. His connection to the satellite above him is almost an afterthought; a broad overview of the ocean that shows a few boats he can easily avoid and nothing approaching a threat. He flies up as high as he’s been, staring up at stars he has more often than not thought he will never see again, and then blasts down towards the ocean. He pulls up in plenty of time, really, even as the ocean mists his suit from the proximity of the flight stabilizers. He shouts in exhilaration because _damn_ did he miss this; missed the flying and the freedom and the heady burn of adrenaline. He’s back, he is _back_ , and fuck them if they think they can take it away from him.

A part of him wants nothing more than to set down in front of the Avengers, to show them exactly how wrong they were. Iron Man, fallen? Wings clipped? He is a goddam _phoenix_ in hot rod red and gold. He will pull himself out of his own ashes _every damn time_ because he is Tony Stark and he is _un-fucking-stoppable_.

He’s got more sense than that. Anyway, that part of his life is over. Bruce is the only Avenger that wanted anything to do with him, and he will cheerfully return the favor. He doesn’t want back in the clubhouse. He has his own clubhouse, and it makes Fury’s look like an eight-year-old’s tree fort—it has better satellite reception, for one, and the password is encrypted eight ways to Sunday, which beats out some spy handshake. Tony’s is the most exclusive club in New York; that’s for sure.

So he wears mirrored sunglasses in public to hide the glow of his eyes and keeps using his red and gold cane. He starts a bit of a trend with them; Tony Stark is still the cutting edge of fashion.

The next time New York is threatened, Tony suits up. He beats the Avengers to the scene by a good seven minutes. Between Jarvis and Extremis, he can thoroughly cover both news outlets and social networking sites. YouTube and Twitter get notified of the crazy shit before SHIELD a good 96% of the time, and Tony’s ability to suit up has always been the fastest among the Avengers, to say nothing of his travel time.

A hoard of Labrador-sized robots is swarming the Federal Reserve Bank, eight legged mechanical spiders of bank-robbing doom. They’re equipped with lasers that are eating their way through the brick in way that does not bode well for any people caught in front of them. Human targets don’t appear to be a priority, given the way they’re ignoring the people fleeing, so maybe it’s less New York threatened and more just the bank. It’s a great test for the suit, however. He can target and fire as fast as he can look at them with his kickass—quite literally—new eyes, and evasion, while limited more by physics, is still notably above his previous performances, as Jarvis mid-battle analysis concludes. The lasers fare much more poorly against his suit than they do against brick, which is good. Improved evasion or not, there are _lot_ of those suckers, and it’s damn near impossible to dodge everything.

The spider-dogs switch from the bank to him, attempting to neutralize the threat before continuing their primary objective, which is perfect for Tony. He doesn’t fancy playing hide and go seek in the Federal Reserve. His luck, they’d bill him for the damages. Point is, he has it under control by the time the Avengers show up. Most of the bots are down, and the last few are doggedly pursuing his destruction, with a single-mindedness that speaks of poor coding. The Avengers are shocked to see him.

“Tony?” Steve asks, showing a very poor set of priorities what with the _laser-wielding spider bots_ still running around. There is hope in his expression, and incredulity.

“No,” he answers, and the voice modulator in the suit makes it as expressionless as any robot movie could hope; it is nothing like his own voice. He doesn’t pause from shooting the robots. “Mr. Stark employs me to run the suit.” Because the Avengers still report to SHIELD and to Fury—who Tony believes utterly (and with the unfailing faith of someone who has been thoroughly fucked by the man) will try to take the suit away from him before he can prove himself field capable again—and anyway, he doesn’t owe his former team a goddam thing.

“Oh,” Steve says. The disappointment in his voice is almost enough to make Tony feel like an asshole, but he doesn’t. If Steve cared that much, he knew exactly where Stark Tower was and he wouldn’t have let SHIELD put up a fucking _obituary_ for Iron Man. “I—I guess that’s good. You can stand down, if you want. We can finish cleaning these up.”

The other Avengers are already moving to do just that, deploying themselves with the smoothness of long teamwork. Tony doesn’t feel a pang at the sight; he really doesn’t. He deliberately doesn’t notice, either, how closely the War Machine flies to him. Fuck ‘em all, anyway. Well, not Bruce, who flips him a wave before swelling green and glorious. He knows the Hulk has his back.

“I don’t take orders from SHIELD,” he says, and continues to take the bots down methodically. Even if they suspect he, Tony Stark, is still Iron Man—and they should, since Rhodey’s the only other person he’s ever let in the damn suit, and his list of close friends is thin on the ground—the martial display should be enough to make them reconsider that assumption. Tony’s blind, after all; even if they believe he’s running the suit with automated piloting and targeting, the speed and responsiveness of the suit pushes the bounds of credulity. They had been only too ready to treat him like shutting off his eyes shut off his brain, and that had been when they were still in close enough proximity for him to shove his genius right back in their faces.

The Avengers don’t say anything more to him after that; just help him squash the rest of the spiders. He stays long enough afterwards to make sure Bruce comes out of it alright, and then heads back to Stark Tower. He has time for a quick shower and a change of clothes before Jarvis announces the presence of Steve Rogers. He slips his sunglasses on and grabs his cane. He meets Steve down in the lobby. The days when Steve was welcome in the penthouse are past. Tony sent his kind of, sort of olive branch, and it went unanswered. There is no chance in hell that Steve is here to chitchat and see how Tony has been.

Extremis lets Tony watch Steve through the cameras as he takes the elevator down; Steve seems uncomfortable and a little nervous as he waits.

The elevator doors open, and Tony steps out. He’s been unable to see for five and a half years; he still fakes it with the best of them—it’s all very Daredevil. He stops a good ways from Steve. He’s offset to Tony’s left; Tony stares carefully ahead, expression neutral.

“Captain Rogers,” he says, voice cool and professional. “How can I help you?”

“You put someone else in the Iron Man suit.” It’s a statement, but it doubles well enough as a question. Tony turns his head towards Steve when he speaks.

“I did.”

“You have _no right_ to—”

“To put someone I trust into the suit I designed and built with my own money?”

Steve closes his mouth, but he’s still angry. He’s clenching his hands, but he doesn’t have either shield or uniform. If it gets violent—not that it will; Captain America hit a blind man, _ha!_ —it won’t go as well for Steve as he expects. The repulsors in Tony’s eyes work as well as hoped, and the targeting is as breathtakingly quick as the suit’s: just point and click.

“You were Iron Man. It should be you in there or no one.” He _is_ Iron Man, but he doesn’t correct Steve.

“A paint job won’t change anything, Rogers, and you were quick enough to take the War Machine onto your team.”

“We needed someone to fill your role.”

Tony smiles, sharp as ice. “You certainly didn’t need me.”

“We needed you, Tony.”

“I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t lie to me in my own home.”

Steve scowls. “I’m not lying.”

“Right,” Tony says, and it has all of his exceptional skill with sarcasm behind it. “Fury told you to take your toys and go home, and your team didn’t blink before you packed.”

“I tried to talk to Fury—”

“ _Fuck you_ , Rogers.” He surprises himself with his vehemence. He thought he was past this shit; he really did. It’s harder to leave the past in the past when it’s standing before him in all its sanctimonious glory. “Maybe Fury could have forced your hand with your living quarters, but he couldn’t have kept you out of here if you wanted to be here. SHIELD doesn’t dictate who your friends are.”

“You were safer if you weren’t associated with us.” Steve says it like he means it, and he might even believe it’s true.

“I have plenty of enemies, a number of whom are playing in your weight class. Do you really think if someone like Loki comes back, he’s going to let bygones be bygones because I retired? How do you figure I’m safer _without_ the superhero team around?”

“We’d put you in the spotlight.”

Tony snorts. “I’m already in the spotlight, and you’re missing the point. It was my choice to make. I’m not a child, no matter how much you all tried to treat me like one. Instead of letting me make that choice, you dropped out of my life. With a team like that, I should have stuck to ‘doesn’t play well with others.’”

Steve’s face goes _furious_ for a second, and he takes a step forward before he catches himself and gets himself back under control. “It hurt, is that what you want to hear? It hurt—it _hurts_ —to see you like this.”

“To see me like what? Happy? Successful? Doing what I love?”

“I _failed_. We _all_ failed. We let you get taken, and we didn’t get to you fast enough. Every time I see you, I remember that.”

“That’s your problem,” Tony says quietly. “Not mine. I never blamed you. I didn’t need your guilt. I needed you to keep being my friends, my team.” He doesn’t say the word _family_. Steve will be a capsicle in hell before Tony admits that aloud to anyone but Pepper or Bruce. “I needed you to let me keep helping in any way I could. And you will note the very specific past tense in those sentences. The team thing didn’t work out. Whatever, that’s fine. I rolled with it. I found someone else to put in the Iron Man suit. I’m still _here_. I’m still _me_. I’m still alive and doing everything in my power to help make this world a better place. It’s your loss that none of you could see that.”

“I wish we had,” Steve says quietly.

“Wishes, beggars, riding,” Tony says, waving a hand. “We done here?”

“I’m sorry.”

What the fucking _fuck_ is Tony supposed to say to that? _I’m sorry_ doesn’t change the last few years, it doesn’t change the fact that they _left_ , and it doesn’t change the fact that some small part of Tony is still _furious_ at them all even as he _misses_ them. It’s a hell of a lot easier to be moved on when they’re out of sight and out of mind and he doesn’t have the ghost of Christmas past bringing all the memories—good and painful—up again.

“I don’t know what to do with that,” he says at last, because if there’s anything dating Pepper and Bruce has taught him, it’s that occasionally open and honest communication has its uses.

“Me either,” Steve says, and shrugs. The anger’s gone again, and he’s back to looking uncomfortable and a little lost. “I miss you. Rhodes is great, but he isn’t you.”

“No one is,” Tony says with a grin.

“I thought, after a while, that we—I—wouldn’t be welcome anymore because it had been so long,” Steve admits, and he looks away as he says it.

“Probably wouldn’t have been, sometimes,” Tony says candidly.

“Is this one of those sometimes?” And damn it all, that’s _hope_ warring with sadness in Steve’s face. No need to hide your expression from the blind, clearly.

Tony’s quiet. They had meant a lot to him at one point. He’s not nostalgic by nature, but that doesn’t keep him from sometimes missing the cheerful chaos that the tower could be and the camaraderie of his fellow heroes. His life is better now in some ways—in Pepper-and-Bruce-shaped ways—but it’s also emptier in others, in the place where, briefly, he’d had a team and more friends than he could count on one hand (which now could be counted on his thumbs), a place where Rhodey used to be in his life, a place where he had felt part of something bigger and amazing. Losing it had _hurt_. It hadn’t hurt as much as Stane’s betrayal, not quite, but to voluntarily open himself to that again seemed… damn impossible. He’d tried; he’d played the game. He’d been a team player. Now he has the suit back and his sight, but he doesn’t think he wants what came with it before.

In his silence, the hope in Steve’s face falls away. “I see. I won’t bother you anymore.”

He starts to walk away; Tony decides.

“One, you don’t treat me like a cripple or a child. Two, Iron Man stays separate from the Avengers; I won’t have anything to do with SHIELD, and neither will my employees. None of that is negotiable. Last chance, Steve.”

Steve turns back and he’s grinning. “Okay. Okay, I can do that.”

Tony sighs. “Come on. Let’s go get a drink; finish burying the hatchet.”

He waves for Steve to follow him and heads back to the elevator. The doors open as they approach. Tony doesn’t even need Extremis for that.

“Penthouse, Jarvis.”

“Yes, sir.” The elevator doors close and they speed up. Steve clears his throat.

“I was a little surprised you trusted someone else in your suit. You were always pretty strongly against it.”

“Coulson gave me the idea, actually.”

Steve starts next to him. “Coulson?”

“When I first made the suit, before my first press conference, he wanted me to tell everyone that Iron Man was my bodyguard.” He grins. “I declined the secret identity; I’m sure you’ve seen the footage.”

Steve nods, and then catches himself. “I did,” he says aloud. The elevator doors open, and Jarvis announces the floor. Tony steps out first, again, making his way to the bar. He really could do this part blind, even if he doesn’t have to any more. He can turn off the eyes for authenticity, but he prefers the advantage. Steve sits on one of the nearby couches.

“I decided the bodyguard thing wasn’t a half bad idea.” He wonders if Steve is going to ask who it is in the suit, but he doesn’t.

“It still pisses me off a little,” Steve says, his grin self-deprecating. “It was hard enough seeing Rhodes in a suit, and his is noticeably different. Seeing someone in _yours_ … it was tough.”

Tony laughs. “Well, it got you off your ass and over here for the first time in five odd years, so. Anyway, what do you want?”

“Whatever you’re having is fine.”

“Still no taste for it, huh? Don’t know why I bother wasting the good stuff on you.”

Steve smiles. “Your optimism is your only good quality.”

Tony frowns severely and points a finger at him. “That is slander; terrible, terrible slander. I’ll have you know that I have many good qualities and not a one is something as dirty as optimism.”

He leaves the cane by the bar and brings both glasses over to the couch. He’s been able to navigate his own home without a cane since before the Rogers and Company magic troupe pulled off Nick Fury’s Amazing Vanishing Act, so he’s not worried Steve’s going to leap to what should be highly improbable conclusions, unless people actually remembered for once that he’s _Tony Stark_. He hands one of the glasses to Steve and joins him on the couch.

They talk, like normal people—like friends. Tony tells him about the charities and the new technology he’s been working on—but not the eyes; let’s not give the game away, and they don’t even know if it’s viable yet—and Steve tells him about the Avengers, which hurts a bit, but like something clean, something like moving on did. He expects it will get easier, and he kind of wants it to because this is the first time since he went blind that things feel normal between him and Steve. He knows Steve is trying, can see him checking himself sometimes in the conversation, but Steve sticks to his part for the entire time: doesn’t treat him like a child or a cripple, doesn’t apologize for saying things like _you should have seen_ , even if Tony catches him wincing occasionally when he realizes he’s done it.

Tony thinks in passing that he could make this a hell of a lot easier on Steve by showing off his new eyes, but he doesn’t. He wants to rebuild this friendship on his own terms, if it can be rebuilt at all. He doesn’t want his better-than-sighted status to make the difference. He wants Steve to meet him on his terms and accept that Tony’s a competent adult regardless of what happens to him. He’s not sure he’ll ever trust Steve’s friendship again, but he knows he won’t for certain if Steve’s respect is given back because of his new eyes.

Pepper and Bruce come in together, and he can tell neither one expected to see Steve there.

“Hey, Steve,” Bruce says.

At the same time Pepper says, with that same cool, professional politeness Tony used earlier, “Captain Rogers. This is an unexpected surprise.”

There’s a pointed look at Tony, which he ignores because, hey, currently pretending to be blind, right? Just because he _can_ multitask and send texts by thinking about it doesn’t mean he _was_ thinking about it. Sure, he could have warned them, if he’d thought about it, but he’d been tweaking the design on the Mark XIII while he and Steve talked, which had seemed important at the time. Yeah, in retrospect, courtesy might’ve been a good call, but there is only so far Tony’s come in remembering other people have emotions, too.

“Yeah, Cap and I are chitchatting.” Tony sees a small, delighted grin on Steve’s face at the nickname, because maybe he’s been keeping a verbal distance with the Rogers thing.

“Are you staying for dinner, Captain?” asks Pepper, all perfect hostess. Pepper’s used to being polite to people she dislikes. Steve isn’t slow on the uptake, either, for all that he looks like he should only be good for photographs and clubbing people over the head. He knows he’s not welcome, not _really_ welcome, like he used to be. He shakes his head.

“I don’t want to intrude.”

“As you like,” Pepper says. She doesn’t say, “You aren’t intruding,” which, in Pepper’s language, is all but telling him to get the fuck out.

“Another time,” Tony says, and he means it, but he should probably explain to Pepper and Bruce that they’ve been playing nice before he expects everyone to break bread together. Steve smiles at him, and reaches out to squeeze his shoulder.

“I’ll take my leave, then. I’ll see you another time.”

“Sounds good, Cap. You still have my number?”

“I do. See you around, Tony. Bruce, Pepper.” He nods to them as he leaves.

After the elevator doors close behind him, Bruce says, “That was probably the last thing I expected to see when I got home.”

“I’ll invite Loki next time,” Tony says with a grin.

“Ha, ha. What’s the deal?”

“We hashed some things out. He apologized. I’m giving him a second chance. _Don’t_ tell him about the eyes, by the way. As far as everyone is concerned, Iron Man is my bodyguard and we’re not releasing his identity.”

Pepper nods.

“Not that I’m disagreeing here, but why don’t you want me to tell him about the eyes? Why keep Iron Man’s identity a secret at all at this point?” Bruce asks. “I’d think you’d want to show them both off.”

“Maybe eventually. I don’t want Fury grounding me before I can prove it works and that I’m not a reckless idiot endangering the citizens of New York. As for Steve, getting my sight back doesn’t mean he gets my friendship back.”

Bruce nods, and Tony appreciates that neither one of them calls it silly. They simply sit down with him—Bruce on his left, hand warm on the back of Tony’s neck; Pepper on his right, fingers laced between his—and talk to him about something that isn’t the Avengers, SHIELD, Fury, or Iron Man.

Life gets even better. Iron Man doesn’t join the Avengers, but if they end up at the same place, stopping the same problem, they work together long enough to get it done. It’s good to fight with Bruce again; he missed the Hulk at his back. He keeps his distance from the others, except Steve. Doesn’t encourage camaraderie or after battle socialization, and none of them try to change that. He figures one of these days he might even forgive Rhodey for taking his place.

Steve continues to come by the tower, with greater and greater frequency. He apologizes to Pepper when he thinks Tony can’t hear because he doesn’t realize how thoroughly Tony, Jarvis, and Extremis are wired together these days. One of the guest rooms at the tower slowly becomes Steve’s, even if he doesn’t move back in. Tony wouldn’t want that, anyway. Been there, done that, remodeled the fuck out of the T-shirt when it crashed and burned.

Steve still fucks up sometimes on how to act around Tony, but he’s trying. He’s asked Bruce for advice, and mostly catches himself being an ass, so Tony cuts him some slack and doesn’t call the second chance off. Steve does it less and less, until he’s treating Tony like he used to, with reasonable and non-condescending accommodations, and Tony thinks he’s maybe starting to believe this friendship can work.

Then, eight months after Tony gets his eyes, Stark Industries unveils the commercial prototype for a visual implant that looks like a human eye and can be wired directly into the brain. Tony figures this is the point where his slowly-reclaimed friendship with Steve is actually going to work or it’s going to blow up thoroughly, because Steve’s a smart cookie and there’s no way he’s going to miss the connection. Steve is on his doorstep within two hours of the press release. It’s expected, but still impressive. Tony’s sitting on the couch with a drink when he comes up the elevator. He’s still got his glasses and cane, but he expects he won’t need them one way or the other much longer.

“How long have you been able to see?” Steve asks as he collapses on the couch. Tony’s surprised there’s no accusation there; he’d expected Steve to be pissed. It gives him a bit of hope, like maybe this will work after all.

“How do you figure I can see?” Tony asks.

“Oh, come on, Tony. I know you. New tech like that? There’s no way you didn’t use yourself as the test dummy.” Steve’s smile is wry, but it’s also accepting.

Tony laughs. “Am I really that predictable?”

“Sometimes.”

Tony slips the sunglasses off and meets Steve’s gaze with his inhuman one. He expects it will disconcert people, since he has no eyelids or tear ducts anymore. His eye sockets have been fitted with metal brackets that hold in his new eyes, like the world’s thickest-rimmed glasses, but _titanium_. As a bonus, they mostly cover the scarring around his eyes where the acid splashed. The eyes—and they are only eyes in the loosest sense, in that they allow him to see—are slightly curved, like all his repulsors, but not enough to be close to the shape of a human eye. They’re a cool, uniform, and utterly alien blue; although he can change the color if he likes, he prefers to leave it matching the arc reactor. It seems fitting.

Steve inhales sharply. “Those don’t look like the prototypes you’re putting out.”

“Of course they aren’t. These are the advanced model, the visual equivalent to the Iron Man suit.”

“What do they do?”

“Mostly what the commercial ones do, only better. More thorough neural integration, more features.”

“They let you run the Iron Man suit.”

“Among other things,” Tony agrees.

“It’s been you all along.”

“Of course it has. You’ve been around, Cap. Who else would I put in there? I don’t have that many people left to trust.”

“You could have told me.”

“If I told you a blind man was running the Iron Man suit, you would have tried to make me stop.”

“I wouldn’t—”

“If not you, then Fury. Look at his track record with me, especially since I lost my sight. Tell me I’m wrong.”

Steve looks down. “If you told us about the eyes…”

“You mean the untested prototype eyes designed by a blind man? You remember Fury’s opinion of my ability to engineer these days, right?”

“I’m sorry you didn’t feel like you could trust me to keep it from Fury.”

Tony laughs; it isn’t all humor. “Can you blame me? Can you honestly tell me that before we started patching things up, there was absolutely no chance that, for my own good and to keep me safe, you wouldn’t have gone to Fury and had him ground me? Again? Or done it yourself with the Avengers?”

Steve doesn’t look away. “I don’t think I would have, but if I had, it would have been the wrong call.”

“Obviously,” Tony says, but he’s glad Steve said it anyway. His smile gets wicked. “Want to see something cool and completely irresponsible?” Because he’s had no one to show this off to except Pepper and Bruce, and they aren’t _nearly_ as impressed as they should be by his brilliance.

“Yes?” Steve doesn’t sound entirely convinced, but Tony’s never let that stop him from showing off. He drains the rest of the drink, and then tosses the empty glass over the non-carpeted area.

A repulsor blast from his eyes shatters it at the peak of its arc.

“Holy shit!” Steve shouts and jerks back. Tony howls with laughter. “You are a goddam madman, Stark!” But Steve is laughing now, too, even if he still looks a little horrified. “Tell me the commercial ones don’t do that. _Please_.”

“Be serious,” Tony scoffs. “Like I’d give out my best toys.” With a mental nudge through Extremis, he sets an industrial-strength Roomba on the glass.

“You said they were like Iron Man for your eyes,” Steve shakes his head. “The design makes sense now.”

“Pepper said they might creep people out which, hey, cool, I don’t mind that, but apparently our average consumer might, so there was a pretty heavy revamp that Bruce and I had to do on them. The eyes aren’t… really the only thing I put in,” he admitted.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m wired up like a Christmas tree.” Tony runs a hand over his head and gestures at his torso in explanation. “The eyes are only the most obvious part. They’re wired more thoroughly into my brain than the commercial ones are, and they’re powered by the arc reactor instead of thermoelectrics. There’s a few more bells and whistles, too.”

“Tony, what did you do to yourself?” Steve says softly, and more than a little worried. It would be sweet if it wasn’t pissing Tony off.

“I upgraded. Tony 2.0. Well, Extremis, actually. I’m hooked directly into Jarvis by satellite, and I run the Mark XII neurally. Increased reaction time, better targeting; you’ve seen.”

“Yeah, but Tony, it sounds dangerous.”

Tony shakes his head. “I had Bruce looking over my shoulder on this one. We tested it as thoroughly as we could before we implemented it. You think Pepper would have let me do it otherwise? Or Bruce?”

“I suppose not. You’ve just never made your survival as high a priority as some of us would like,” Steve says with an awkward shrug. “I worry.”

“I’ve noticed. Look, Steve. I’m on borrowed time.”

“You’re not—”

“Listen to me. I should have died years ago, in that cave in Afghanistan. Yinsen gave me my life back. That sacrifice means nothing without a reason, unless I give it a reason. This is what I’m doing: I’m trying to live my life as a good man, a man accountable for his actions. I’m trying to be more than the Merchant of Death with a sea of blood on his hands. I need my legacy to be more than that. If that means I take a few risks, I accept that. It’s worth it. Dealing with the shrapnel in my heart, the palladium poisoning, flying a nuke through that portal, losing my eyes— _all_ of it is worth it, if it makes my legacy better than the one left by the man I was.”

“I know you’re a good man,” Steve counters, and there’s steel in his face. “You don’t have to kill yourself proving it.”

“I’d rather not die doing it. I’m pretty keen on living, but I am _willing_ , if that’s what it takes to protect people. Every one of us would make the same choice, and you know it.”

Steve rubs his face. “Some of us are quicker and more willing to make it than others, Tony, and you were always first to jump into the line of fire.”

Tony spreads his hands. “Difference of opinion there, I guess. Anyway, I’ve got new tricks to show off. Come on; let’s go down to my workshop.”

He leaves the glasses and the cane. The workshop is as neat as it was the last time Steve was down here, and it still has all of the accommodations set up. It’s quiet, but the lights come on when they enter. Tony turns to face Steve, raises his hands to say _ta da_.

“Let’s show off, Jarvis.”

“How out of character for you, sir,” is the reply from Jarvis, and the screens behind Tony come to life. One is scanning the social networking and media news sites; one flickers between the security feeds of the tower; one composes an email; another shows a prototype for a mechanical heart, equations spinning on one side of the screen and comparative material analysis scrolling on the other.

“You’re doing all this?” Steve asks.

“Partly. Some of it is Jarvis doing the grunt work; some of it is me over the Extremis interface.” Tony grins like a kid with a new toy. “I’ve beaten the biological bottleneck for multitasking.”

“This is amazing.” Even if Tony’s only paying brief attention to everything running—and his attention isn’t brief; he’s closely monitoring to a good part of it—it’s still impressive.

“Tony,” Steve starts, and he’s hesitating, which means Tony probably isn’t going to like what he’s going to say next. “Now that the eyes are public, people are going to figure out you’re Iron Man again.”

“Not really avoidable, not unless I was going to keep this from helping people, which was never a possibility.”

“I didn’t mean you should have. I was just wondering if this means you’re coming back.”

“Steve—”

“Because you could,” Steve interrupts, and Tony can see his desperation in the tense way he’s holding himself, in the speed the words come out, like someone’s overclocked his processor. “You could come back, be an Avenger again. There’s a place for you. Zero involvement with Fury, if that’s what it takes. Whatever you want, we’ll make it work. Please, come back, Tony. I miss you,” he admits.

“I don’t want it,” Tony says quietly. “I moved on. You need to, too. What I have now, it works. It’s what I want. There’s no point in trying to hold on to something that isn’t there anymore.” Real life doesn’t have backups. Tony can’t just restore to the last good version of his life. He doesn’t know that he would do it even if it was possible, because he suspects that _this_ might be that best version.

In one version of his life, maybe he has the Avengers. Maybe he has a family forged in combat that fills his tower with cheerful chaos. Maybe he has his original eyes, and all the privilege he never realized came with them. Maybe he has Pepper, and maybe he even has Bruce. Maybe he’s happy. Maybe he saves the world.

There’s another version of his life where his family is smaller—only Bruce, only Pepper—but he trusts them with the unwavering faith he had never been capable of before he’d had his life systematically stripped away and had rebuilt it with only them by his side. His life is quieter than it could have been and used to be, but he doesn’t need the chaos to distract him from a bottle. He’s two years sober, and not reverting to the alcoholic prototype Tony.

He has eyes he’s made with his hands, and he’s given them affordably to everyone who needs them. He spends more time creating what people need than making better bullets for his Iron Man gun. He is still Iron Man; he still saves the world, but fighting his way back into the suit has made him a better person. Afghanistan opened his eyes, but what he’s gone through since has given him new ones, and that is more than just the literal truth.

He’s still happy. He still has Pepper, and he still has Bruce. He forgives Steve and maybe he even stops being an ass and forgives Rhodey, now that Tony has his own wings back. Nick Fury can still fuck right off, though.

In one life, Tony Stark is Iron Man and he saves the world.

In another, he does more than save the world. He changes it into something greater, too.


End file.
